


Liar

by ushauz



Series: You Spin Me Right Round [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Gen, Minor Dorian/Vasaad, Nothing Good Happens in Seheron, Roleswap, Seheron, Undead, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 14:57:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13706826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ushauz/pseuds/ushauz
Summary: A saarebas was a dangerous thing. A saarebas listened to demons and used magic and didn’t know itself. That was what a saarebas did.He didn’t use magic. He didn’t hear demons, and he didn’t wander the Fade. He had been evaluated and given a proper role which he had accepted with grace. Therefore, he was not a saarebas.A Roleswap AU in which Dorian is born under the Qun, neglects to inform people of a few trifling details, and does not end up being a shining example of Qunari-hood.





	Liar

Imekari was six when it happened, and by all of the luck in the world, they had been off by themself, poking around in the brush. A snake had slithered off, and they were only curious and wanted to see where it went. The underbrush made everything dark, even when pulling it back, and in their frustration, a ball of pale, green light emerged from their fingers.

They startled and cried out, and the light pulsated in response. In the distance, they heard Tama call out after them.

Fear struck them then. They couldn’t exactly place why, not yet, but it was overwhelming. And in their fear, they somehow made the light go away just before Tama reached them.

“Are you alright?” she asked, not quite annoyed. Tamas didn’t have favorites as that would be against the Qun, but if she did have one, it certainly wasn’t this imekari.

Honesty was important. Lies were one of the sources of suffering, after all.

“I saw a snake,” they said. It wasn’t a lie. “It slithered away into the underbrush.”

Tama asked him after the colors of the snake and then was relieved when apparently it was a harmless one. If she suspected anything, she said nothing. She led them away, but Imekari couldn’t help but glance back at the bush, something gnawing in their gut.

—

By the time they saw their first saarebas, they had already struggled with not making lights show up and follow them. And it was them, they knew, as the lights responded to their wishes. They were deathly scared, and they _had_ planned on telling Tama, but Tama always said you had to have proof before you said something, and Imekari couldn’t get the lights to stay long enough when they did feel like trying.

Then Imekari saw the saarebas. Its hands were shackled behind, a huge, overweight collar with spikes upon its neck, horns sawed off and mask hiding its features and lips sewn shut.

They weren’t the only imekari upset by its appearance, but Tama explained that the arvaarad’s job was to watch over these pitiful things. Saarebas were plagued with demons and thus needed to be bound and shackled at all times. Saarebas were only used as weapons in war, Tama said, the only outlet for the destructive energy they contained.

Tama then stressed safety and assured them that as long as the arvaarad held its leash, it was as safe as it could be. If they ever escaped, they are killed.

But you must never, never approach a saarebas without an arvaarad as they will inevitably corrupt you. Tama didn’t say what would happen next, but Imekari was not a stupid child and knew the underlying truth behind those words.

—

Imekari was plagued with nightmares that night. Saarebas skittered at the edges of their vision, and the awful shuffling sound of chains grated against their ears. They woke up crying softly, and they clutched their knees.

But… if Tama never asked, then it wouldn’t _really_ be lying, right? And if Imekari was good and didn’t use magic, then surely they wouldn’t needed to be watched over? It had to be the magic that drew the demons. Demons didn’t go after people who didn’t have magic, so if they didn’t use magic, there wouldn’t be demons, and then they couldn’t corrupt people with their deceitful presence.

If it got bad, and Imekari couldn’t control themself, then obviously people would notice and… and they supposed that’s what should happen to them, to keep other people safe from them. And sometimes saarebas only came into their demons when they were adults Tama said, so if they were discovered late, few would question it.

All Imekari had to do then was not use magic, harder than anyone had not used magic before. They had to, because seeing a saarebas for themself…

They had to.

[They were a terrible, horrible child that would rather risk the corruption of everyone around them than be safely contained.]

—

Their kith group had reached their twelfth year, and batch by batch, they were disappearing, assigned to learn their chosen roles in the Qun. They usually went in larger batches, to the antaam, to many needed positions in the arigena, though occasionally to some other job.

They yet had to slip up again with the lights through sheer determination. And then through sheer stubbornness, they ignored any whispering around them. If Imekari didn’t listen to the demons to the point they couldn’t even make out what they were saying, then they couldn’t be tempted, now could they?

One day, Tama ushered in Imekari by themself into a small room with a single man inside who looked Imekari over approvingly. Tama looked bored as she always did, but in theory her lack of attachment to any of the imekari made her the best at figuring out where they would fit in the Qun.

“This is him,” she said neutrally. “I’ve already sent you my reports on his talents and how he would be best handled.”

‘He’ then. Okay.

Tama put a hand on their—his—shoulder and looked down at him. “This is Besrathari, a Ben-Hassrath.”

Imekari’s first thoughts were ‘oh fuck’ and then a brief bit of internal screaming. Imekari however had trained himself by now to not let _his_ inner thoughts reflect on his face. And then _his_ mind quickly latched onto ‘he’. Not ‘it’. ‘He’.

“Okay?” he asked confusedly. He now had no idea what was going on at all.

The Ben-Hassrath just looked amused. “I’ve been told you are from a long line of ashkaari and too clever by far. And too inquisitive.”

Imekari began to suspect things around this point, but that couldn’t possibly be it because he wasn’t magic. “Yes,” he said. Curiosity wasn’t always a virtue according to Tama.

Many things he did weren’t a virtue according to Tama.

He really wasn’t Tama’s favorite.

Tama had already removed her hand from his shoulder. “While there is a strong leaning towards the Dangerous Purpose branch, Questions isn’t out of the picture yet. He will need to be re-evaluated after basic training.”

Oh no.

Besrathari smiled, and at least he did look proud. “Welcome to the Ben-Hassrath, kid.”

—

He nearly threw up that night.

It was a prestigious position. All were equal under the Qun, of course, but very few qualified to join the Ben-Hassrath’s ranks. And apparently! This included him!

They would find out. There was no way they wouldn’t find out. The Ben-Hassrath could sniff out any lie. He supposed, in time, so would he, but before he could, they would know and drag him over to be a saarebas and-

He put a hand over his mouth, insides heaving.

They would learn every tell of his. Every flicker of a lie. The only way this wouldn’t happen was if he didn’t lie at all. Or not just not lie, not _deceive_. He couldn’t just lie and lie and lie and neglect to tell the truth. If he was going to be vile enough to risk _corrupting_ everyone without getting found out, he needed to believe it. He needed to think it wasn’t any lie at all.

—

A saarebas was a dangerous thing. A saarebas listened to demons and used magic and didn’t know itself. That was what a saarebas did.

He didn’t use magic. He didn’t hear demons, and he didn’t wander the Fade. He had been evaluated and given a proper role which he had accepted with grace. Therefore, he was not a saarebas. He was only dangerous in the same sense that all Ben-Hassrath were dangerous, nothing more.

Saarebas were dangerous things and used magic and listened to demons, and he wasn’t a dangerous thing, and he didn’t use magic, and he didn’t listen to demons, and-

—

Because Koslun from beyond the grave apparently thought it was hysterical, he was sorted into Dangerous Purpose as Tama had thought, the branch that among other things dealt with _magic_. Besrathari was from the same group and mentored him and several other students.

“Magic is dangerous,” the instructor said.

Yes it was.

“And it can’t be trusted.”

It really couldn’t.

“This does not mean we do not study it. It is as dangerous as gaatlok, but the Qun uses everything, even saarebas.”

He wasn’t saarebas.

“Saarebas and bas saarebas aren’t the only magic things out there, however. What you will be learning are the safety protocols in such things as well as the standard regiment all Ben-Hassrath go through with an emphasis on history, bas culture, and archaeology. You have all been assigned as isskari, and your job will be the study and extraction of magical items for our taarbas and ashkaari to catalog and examine.”

He had almost made ashkaari, but he was too quick on his feet and more physically fit than most scholars.

He also didn’t have the same tendency to ignore everything around him and thus walk into walls and traps like most ashkaari would.

—

While the Ben-Hassrath had been nothing but stress, at least at first which was silly since there was honestly nothing to fear, Isskari decided everything was worth it when he first stepped foot inside the site of an ancient ruin. It was a sprawling complex of connected pyramids with such a feeling of- of weight, of history, permeating the air.

“Don’t get too excited,” Besrathari said with a smile. “There is a reason we haven’t let the ashkaari in here yet.”

Isskari nodded, still buzzing in excitement regardless. They passed the day carefully combing the area. Protocol could not be rushed. Even if they didn’t find anything that day, the excitement never left. And maybe the second day they didn’t find anything, or the third day, but on the fifth day they found a strange dagger that flickered heat. Isskari diligently noted the exact position of where it was using the ruin designation number, distance from walls and landmarks, and a helpful sketch. Then he carefully retrieved said item using proper safety methods to bring back to the base.

After a few years, Isskari was trusted on his own, or rather, trusted to be on his own and not mess up protocol when out with magic retrieval groups. He was known for being a stickler for safety, and who wouldn’t be? Magic was dangerous and had to be carefully handled or not used at all.

It was in some ancient area even for ruins that it first happened. There had been a freak cave-in due to instability, and Isskari had been separated from the rest. He coughed dust and groped blindly in the darkness until he could pull out his glowstone for light. Standard issue since fire would destroy clean air after all.

The cave-in was so thick he couldn’t even hear the group on the other side, separated by a mixture of boulders and rocks and small rocks and sand.

Isskari didn’t panic as he had been trained not to, and instead pulled out a stick of chalk to mark on the walls where he had been, and when needed, in which order he tried routes.

The problems was that the ruins were so massive and so far underground that it was near hopeless. Isskari didn’t panic, as that wouldn’t help things, but he tried to consider other options. So he sat to meditate for clearer thinking, letting his mind blank.

And that’s when he heard it.

It was the faintest whispering coming from the stones around him. Isskari perhaps panicked a little at this point, but who could blame him?

But when his heart raced, the whispers vanished. Isskari frowned.

Demons were drawn to agitated states. If being agitated disrupted the whispers, then could it be that they weren’t demons? He began to experiment, keeping his breathing slow and his mind empty. And when he did, he could hear them again. They weren’t as much words as strange impressions. He carefully reached out to touch a wall. It wasn’t like things became clear. It wasn’t like detailed knowledge floated through him or words filled his mind, and it definitely wasn’t like someone trying to show him things or tempt with with corruptive knowledge. No, it was like a remembrance, a strange feeling as if he had been here before.

He struggled with keeping this almost sixth sense as he wandered the halls, still using chalk to mark his progress, but he found himself just _knowing_ when he came to crossroads. And after hours, he saw light, a half-collapsed entrance that was still large enough to crawl through.

His kith didn’t suspect anything, merely laughed at his luck and hugged him in relief. Isskari considered telling them that the ruins had guided them out, but he had no proof, and without proof, what was the point in telling?

—

The ruin continued to whisper at him. The strange remembrance feelings guided him to secret passages, old rooms, and hidden treasures. Luck could no longer be fully explained, but Besrathari praised his sharp senses. Isskari felt terrible, but out of a strange respect, he never told anyone of the ruins’ almost consciousness. After all, they had saved him, and he had the strange feeling the others wouldn’t understand.

Months later, his kith were moved to another ruin. He felt awful as they would expect far more of him than he truly could do, but a few days in, he felt the same nudging.

And then at the next area, it took him only a day of meditation to have the ruins speak to him, even clearer than before. It was never in words, the impressions became stronger, actually almost getting visions in his mind. He simply knew where the traps were, the hidden passages, the places of importance.

It couldn’t have been just him as other qunari had occasionally had the feeling of being watched at two of the sites. So if it wasn’t just him, then it wasn’t magic, and if it wasn’t magic, then he wasn’t saarebas. He never was, of course, but there was still nothing to be worried about.

[They only felt watched at best; none of them heard the ruins speak to them or get even the faintest impressions or guidances.]

“Some areas in this world have a weaker barrier against demons,” Besrathari said. “In areas such as these, one must be even more vigilant to avoid the whispering of demons.”

Demons tried to promise things though. They would talk with words, and that was something ruins never did. Thus, none of these ruins were possessed by demons. The most they ever contained was possessed corpses. Those the arvaarad were usually sent in to deal with.

Even if that was the right thing, Isskari always felt uneasy seeing them, which was silly since the arvaarad only dealt with magic things, and Isskari had nothing to fear.

—

After years of poking around ruins, quietly listening and observing and generally having the time of his life, Isskari was pulled into an office alone with two superiors. This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened as occasionally the trainers would do this for all qunari. There was nothing to fear.

“We have noted your incredibly talented skills at scouting ruins,” one of them said.

Isskari inclined his head at the praise.

“You are fast, you rarely make mistakes, and not a single Taarbas has complained of you,” the other said dryly. “How we will never know.”

The first failed to hide his laughter at that. After all, there was no true knowledge anyone could know, no matter how blatantly obvious.

“We have need of people with such skills elsewhere,” the second said, “so we are reassigning you.”

“Where is that?” he asked.

The second folded her hands and looked sympathetic. “Seheron.”

...Isskari may have been a bit quick to presume there had been nothing to fear.

—

Two years was a standard rotation. That was deemed about the usual maximum for an agent to handle, and they were thus pulled out if they lasted that long.

Two years.

Depending on the state after those two years, they might spent time in recovery and assigned easier positions afterwards, whether teaching, organizing, or gentle spywork. If he survived, he would likely be assigned to study the magical artifacts back in the main base in Par Vollen in peace or return to his earlier job of studying ruins in far safer areas.

_Two years._

In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t that long. On a day-by-day basis? It would be hell.

It wasn’t the only place where asala-taar was contracted, and sometimes asala-taar could be contracted from other trauma. But it was an epidemic in Seheron to the point where twice as many people contracted it than people who died.

And it was Seheron. Death wasn’t just commonplace; it was the shitty friend planning on stabbing you in the back the moment you weren’t looking.

Besrathari had congratulated him, proud of his assignment, and had apparently been the fucker who had suggested it. Other members of his kith regarded him with pity or wished him as much luck as the tides would bring.

—

At first, Isskari had clung to the hope since he worked mostly in ancient ruins, this would at least put him out of the worst of the fighting.

He had made a near fatal miscalculation. The ruins other sites were filled with history, yes, but also magical artifacts. Tevinter loved magical artifacts and didn’t like it if the Qunari ran off with them. His superiors hadn’t lied about how much speed he would need.

Isskari was almost always sent in alone when they found one. Too many people and the damn vints would find out. The blessing was that, alone, no one questioned if he began talking to the ruins directly. It was stupid and dangerous and possibly corrupting—except that it wasn’t, as there were no demons. Nothing offered. No visions plaguing his mind. No, he asked the questions, and the ruins would answer and tell him all sorts of things. He would make his sketches, quickly confirm things, and then wait a while so he didn’t come back too quickly. That would be suspicious.

Not that there was anything wrong with what he was doing. The Qunari on Seheron were merely jumpy, that was all. In time, he likely would be too.

Around the second time he was double-checking his area, he stumbled upon a sight that would, in the end, be his undoing.

The site he was on was of ancient Tevinter, some old watchpost. However even their watchposts were filled with magic; anything Tevinter touched was. In the basement, there was some kind of research or torture room; it was always hard to tell with Tevinter, or perhaps and more likely it was all the same to them. Ancient rust stained the equipment, racks, cages, wheels with jutting spikes. But in a few of these cages, chained as well, were corpses.

Very restless corpses that had started to move upon his entry.

One attempted to break out and attack him, feebly hitting against the bars of its cage, but none of them posed a threat.

Isskari wasn’t stupid. He had been taught by the best after all. He knew what the only thing that could cause corpses to rise was. He carefully marked this down in the notes and turned to leave. But as he did, a terrible, heart-wrenching wail arose from one of them. Despite himself, despite all his training, he turned.

That one… that one had spikes hammered through its eyes. Knife wounds littered its face, arms, and legs, and its ribs had been splayed open revealing the inner chest cavity. It reached for him desperately as best as it could with its hands shackled—not violently like one of them, but almost pleadingly in small jerking motions.

“You picked a bad body to be in, friend,” Isskari said, half sarcastically. But the thing paused for just a moment at ‘friend’, just a second, before it seemed to attempt to point to the knife at Isskari’s side. And then it gestured towards its throat.

Isskari frowned.

This was a really bad idea, but-

The corpse gestured again, more frantic this time before it started to writhe, wailing again.

…did it count as talking to demons if the demons couldn’t talk back? Did they still count as demons if they were stuck inside tortured bodies and only wished for the release of death?

[To call a thing by its name is to know its reason in the world. To call a thing falsely is to put out one's own eyes.]

But Isskari just looked at it, at the sheer pitiful condition. Did it hurt? Did it still feel all of the pain the person did before they died? This… this was a very old tower. How long had it been stuck here, unable to leave? Had it actually possessed the body in foolishness, or did evil mages summon it across and bind it to the corpse? If that was the case…

“I can kill you,” Isskari said shakily, “but you can’t fight back at all. And the moment- the moment the body you are inhabiting dies, you must leave the mortal world, never to return.”

The corpse just waited.

“Can… the knife kill you?” he asked.

It nodded.

“Even if you are in a corpse. Knives normally don’t do much against corpses.”

It nodded again before pointing to its throat.

Its hands were shackled. Its feet were shackled. In theory, there was no way for it to kill him, but you never knew with demons. How many stories had been ground into him about the wiles of demons? How it could be the friendliest ones that drew you astray?

But if he killed it, or put it to rest, or what have you, then there would be one less demon in the world. And by all of their known research, killing an inhabited corpse did kill the demon.

It would rather have death than be stuck in a tortured body for an eternity. And that- Isskari hated himself, but he looked at the shackles and the cage and the spikes, and he hated himself some more. [But he was going to be a nasty, deceitful corrupter, then at the very least he shouldn’t be a hypocritical one.]

Not that he corrupted people.

It gave him no fight, and he was disconcerted at his lack of shock. Instead, upon slitting its throat, it crumbled to dust, shackles clanking against the cage at the sudden loss.

Then the others began to bang or reach for him in desperate motions, and Isskari noted with rising bile that each and every one of them held the marks of torture.

—

Isskari ended up tearing out that last page before copying all of the information over onto the next. All of it except the number of demons in that room. Or that there were demons there at all.

He tossed the torn out page into a fire. It wasn’t a bad thing he did, he reasoned. Demons couldn’t be trusted, and all he did was kill them. That was good. The chances of people being corrupted greatly decreased if there were fewer demons around.

—

Initially, the ones he found weren’t as friendly or as desperate. He could leave them sealed in their rooms and report in desperately before sending the notes back. He could not tell if the whispering of not-ruins had increased since he mercy killed the ones in the tower as Seheron was very, very loud. Isskari had gotten rather good at not listening. Isskari toed a dangerous line of not-listening to superiors as well, but he rarely got caught, so.

Several months in where he was still blessedly alive, he stumbled across one in a sealed tomb. It merely regarded him before looking out.

“Is it raining?” it asked. That question of all things. ‘Is it raining’.

“…no?”

“A pity,” it said. “I haven’t felt rain in so long.”

Did it… did it not realize it was a demon? Did it honestly think it was the person’s body it was inhabiting?

At a loss of what else to do as this really wasn’t how things normally went, he offered, “It will probably be raining in a few hours. The weather is like that.”

It seemed to perk up. “Do you think?”

And then for some fucking reason, it just walked past him as Isskari blinked, too stupid in shock to react. He hesitantly followed from a distance and watched as upon leaving the ruin, it sat patiently down, staring at the sky.

As weather was in Seheron, it rained in a few hours, and the body dissolved to dust shortly after.

Isskari had no idea what was going on.

—

If they didn’t think they were demons, then they weren’t demons. Surely they would know if they were demons. If they weren’t demons, he could talk to them and not risk corruption.

If they weren’t demons, then he still wasn’t saarebas, not that he ever had been, and the only whispering he heard was from ruins, and sometimes they were friendly, and demons were never friendly, and so they weren’t demons and he wasn’t saarebas and-

—

A year and a half in, the broken down ruin Isskari was in exploded with heat and smoke and some kind of poison. He tried to leave, gasping for air, but fell into unconsciousness before he could succeed. When he awoke, it was in shackles and a collar. He panicked, thrashing, before he heard Tevene floating around him.

Oh no.

This was no better.

This could, in fact, be worse.

Upon notice of his movements, he was hauled upright into a sitting position by a woman with a terrible smile.

—

No, he couldn’t fool her into thinking he didn’t know Tevene.

Nor that he wasn’t a member of the isskari.

Nor that he wasn’t qunari at all but a very confused Tal-Vashoth. It was worth an attempt at least.

He didn’t answer, not willingly, but she drew the answers out of him with magic, one by one, until blood dripped from his nose and ears. This wasn’t the first method she had tried, and considering how effective this was, the other methods were probably for her own debased pleasure than anything else.

“Where is your base?” she asked.

No.

She pulled at him again.

_No._

He gagged on her magic, the compulsion ringing through him.

Thousands were in that base. More than just isskari and Ben-Hassrath; all manner of workers, a number of Tamassran, a depressingly large number of rescued slaves in current conversion to viddathari.

She snarled, and the next tug had him collapsed on the floor. _“Answer me,”_ she Commanded, and some barrier in his mind broke, and he just knew he couldn’t refuse, words ready to spill out of his mouth.

And then something else in Isskari’s mind shifted, things clicking and changing in ways he couldn’t fully understand.

“A beach south of here,” he said truthfully, tears stinging at this unwanted betrayal. “In a hidden cove.”

She drug the location out, bit by bit, the surroundings, the buildings, the guards and their rotations, every last detail.

And then she left him alive after, perhaps to be sent to Tevinter as a slave, perhaps to be sacrificed to demons. He didn’t care either way.

—

Three days later, the base he was in was broken into, and he was rescued by a stocky qunari with gentle hands. Isskari found out through a drugged haze that his rescuer was a Vasaad.

Initially, he resisted as best as he could through shame alone, sobbing in his betrayal, but he wasn’t exactly in the best state to resist, so that failed terribly. He and others were quickly brought back to-

The base.

It wasn’t in the south beach.

Isskari stared, very confused.

The base had been in the south beach. He knew this. He told her every last detail because he had seen every last detail in his mind’s eye.

Except no, here the base was, and Isskari’s head swam. He later found out that the only reason he and some other captives were able to be rescued was that a large chunk of the military force of that Tevinter base had moved south a few days march to a very much abandoned cove that had never housed qunari at all.

—

Vasaad helped him recover, and Isskari never mentioned why his head swam for a while, trying to reconcile the differences of this base and where the base _had_ been.

Right?

It took a few weeks to be able to fully move around again and another until he was fit for duty. While he continued recovery, they assigned him to researching the recovered artifacts, his main task when they had no new places to which to send him. With any luck, that would be his only run in with Tevinter hospitality.

—

Isskari was not lucky over the many years, and then when only desperately needed, not lucky on purpose. He quickly learned things for those several unhappy encounters. It was a balance. If you give in too quickly, they will believe it a trick. Too long, and they will tire and kill you. Even if they could force truth, they prefered traditional methods first to ‘loosen the mind’ and make it easier to force him to speak.

He learned how to fake learning compliance, fake giving up, fake ignorance.

He never figured out why sometimes when he broke out, sure that this time he finally gave up secrets, that those secrets had been false all along. It would happen. He knew it would happen, unless it was actively happening.

His superiors thought it was a sign of excellent spywork and occasionally assigned him to be ‘caught’ on purpose. It was never done lightly as they did not wish to waste him, but there were always those moments of great necessity when they needed to feed the enemy false information to have time to move civilian settlements from advancing forces or to trick forces into needed ambushes.

It was demanded of him, and it was for the good of the many, so Isskari would follow his duty and spend time in recovery after, shaking and trying not to hate his talents for making him of such use.

It was selfish to wish otherwise, after all, if it could save others from death or also capture and torture.

Like children. That should never happen to children, but that never stopped Tevinter.

He made it through on that.

At one point, one of his superiors joked he should have been assigned as a reeducator if he knew how to work minds so well. Vasaad merely laughed and said if he was that good at lying, then maybe they should start calling him ‘Hissrad’ instead.

No one made a remark that self-deception was one of the greatest sins in the Qun. After all, it was Seheron, and many things were allowed on Seheron that weren’t elsewhere. It was the only way to survive.

—

“We are sorry.”

“You have done such an excellent job and should feel proud.”

“We have a hard enough time getting people to fill the roles, you see.”

“We honor your sacrifice.”

“We are truly sorry, but we need you here.”

—

Vasaad sat next to him while Isskari curled up in a corner, unmoving.

He sat there quietly with him for a while before finally asking, “Who are we to argue with the Qun?”

It was Seheron for ‘fuck our superiors, but that’s not the best thing to say when you are surrounded by, and are also, Ben-Hassrath’.

—

Despite what bas seemed to think, romance very much was a thing in the Qun, but only that sex wasn’t involved as the Ben-Hassrath got titchy about that. Usually. As always, things were different in Seheron, and as long as both partners couldn’t procreate with each other, and as long as it didn’t become an obsession or distract from needed duties, then such things were barely tolerated and thus usually overlooked.

“Still don’t want to go to a Tamassran?” Vasaad joked, nudging him in private.

Isskari wasn’t sure how to phrase things, or even think of things. They were who you went for if you needed sex, but they held no appeal for him. None of the women did.

Just the men, but there weren’t male Tamassrans. By being Tamassran, they were all women.

“No,” he said and didn’t voice how he also was pleased he hadn’t been called upon for siring purposes. “None of the Tamassrans who fulfill that particular role are appealing to me.”

Vasaad looked over at him almost shyly before sidling up next to him, causing Isskari to shiver. “At some point we are going to have to help you with that. You are so _picky_.”

“Says the man who still refuses vegetables.” Isskari tilted his head. “You are an adult who still refuses to eat his vegetables.”

“It’s the texture, Hissrad. It’s a terrible, terrible texture.” Vasaad looked at him seriously. “Suffering is a choice you know, and we can refuse it.”

Isskari laughed, and Vasaad slid his arm around Isskari’s waist.

—

He lost two fingers to Tevinter interrogation. Mostly they liked to bleed you, or shock you, or twist the blood in your veins until your voice broke from screaming (all of which left their own unique scars). And _then_ they compelled you. Assholes.

On one eventful encounter when he was attempting to flee an area that was currently being swarmed by vints, one of them threw fire at him, catching him ablaze. He survived, of course, but even with the best medical treatment, he ended up with a very large burn scar from his right shoulder to across his chest.

That same shoulder ended up getting shot with an arrow at one point.

And then also stabbed at two different points despite of the amount of vitaar he applied.

A long gash just under his jaw from a failed attempt from a Fog Warrior slitting his throat.

Claws marks that rended flesh on his _fucking right shoulder_ from a restless dead who didn’t want to go peacefully. Went right through the vitaar. As he stumbled into the medical tent later, Vasaad had made some kind of terrible joke that Isskari couldn’t remember as he was in a great deal of pain, thank you.

The bigger joke was that they were still alive when many others were not in growing numbers.

He stopped counting the number of minor scars that piled up, just as he stopped counting the number of people around who were dropping like flies.

—

When not being set on fire by surly fucking mages, Hissrad—as he was now called by almost everyone including his own superiors—had started to approach cautiously but neutrally to the restless dead a few months into his third year. There was something about them that tugged at his mind, but he could never figure out what it was. Nor could he figure out the strange feeling that this was something of which he should never speak to people about.

Sometimes they directly wanted death, or rather to move beyond to wherever they went. He for some reason was able to tell when he did that right, when he helped them pass on instead of _killing_ them. Sometimes they wanted to see something first, walk to the beach, or perhaps die in a specific grove. Sometimes they needed transport to find the location of a dead loved one.

There was one that had been plaguing an area, but upon discussion, Hissrad was able to convince him to move on purely through a favorite missed meal.

They weren’t all friendly or even neutral. It grieved him, but the dead should be at peace. Sataari was blown to pieces in front of him, and Tallis died after hours of choking on poison, but at least he could help the dead.

In the back of his mind, Hissrad recognized a growing obsession when he saw one. With designated free time, Hissrad usually chose to slip away. He didn’t need to find them as much anymore as when in private, they tended to seek him out now, greeting him friendly. A dead woman once brought him a flower.

A dead child presented him with a charred doll.

He kept these gifts. Not in the compound as there would be questions, but in a well hidden stash protected against bugs and the elements.

Logically, he knew it was a coping mechanism. He sought them out more after any particularly bad hit. He couldn’t stop people from dying, quickly, slowly, chunk by chunk, physically and mentally.

But he could bring peace to the dead.

—

Vasaad kept budgies. That was what he did (aside from Hissrad). They were unnecessary, but he kept and whispered things to them and fed them every day from his own rations. His superior, had they been in Par Vollen, might have reported him or at least tried to stop him, but his superior would go missing from time to time to scream her lungs out into the forests.

Everyone had their thing.

“It can be multiple things,” Vasaad said, fingers running through Hissrad’s hair. “As long as it’s only a few.”

Hissrad laughed breathlessly, and Vasaad gently pushed him onto the bed.

—

It had been a freak cave-in, and he was alone as stealth had been key.

Why hadn’t the ruins told him? Why hadn’t they warned him? Or had they, and he simply hadn’t been listening?

Everything spun, and he wasn’t entire sure which way was up. With his highly trained Ben-Hassrath skills, he attempted to lift his hands in front of him.

They pushed against the floor. Okay. Well he was face-down then. Progress.

He attempted to push himself to his knees but failed, arms scraping against the stone. That would hurt later. He would hurt later, more than he did now. Some rocks had seemed to have fallen on him, which was fair since he had fallen through the floor into a much lower level.

Those poor overworked medics would have to see him again, but they would also see him again instead of just another to be healed and sent out and then to die.

Not that they appreciated repeat cases, but better them come back than not at all. And frankly, this wasn’t burns on top of his pre-existing burn scars, just bruising and scrapes and okay yes perhaps a broken rib or two. Sprained wrist. Nothing major in the grand scheme of things down the road.

No more missing fingers. He didn’t want to run out of fingers. He liked his fingers and would prefer to keep as many as he could.

He could have been an ashkaari, he thought bitterly, this time getting to his knees without falling forward. He could currently be elsewhere in a warm room with regular meals where he could study things in peace, he thought, managing to stand shakily. He could still have what looked to be a normal right shoulder if he wasn’t so damn physically fit. He-

He nearly collapsed, careening to the left, and catching himself on a wall. He hissed in pain, and-

His eyes widened. No. No no no no no.

Shakily, he reached upward towards the base of his right horn.

_No._

His hand came away a bloody mess, and his breath hitched stupidly.

It was just a horn. It wasn’t anything vital like an eye or an arm. Just a horn.

His eyes burned, and his breath hitched again.

It was just one fucking horn, Hissrad. This wasn’t the end of the world.

But no, apparently it was, because he broke down sobbing.

—

He was able to find his way out. Namely he asked the ruins where an exit was. The medics had to saw off the rest of that horn as it was in splinters with a risk of fracturing and infecting his entire skull.

They asked him what he wanted to do next. The other horn was fine after all. He could keep it, or they could saw that off as well. It would make balance easier as well as finding sleeping positions. He should have had it sawed off honestly. It would have been the logical choice, and he did keep veering when he walked, and turning his head was the weirdest sensation.

A lack of horns was seen as intimidating among Qunari, and because of this, Tal-Vashoth often decided to remove their horns to make themselves more frightening.

It was also why the horns were removed from saarebas. It warned others of their danger.

“No, I’ll keep it,” Hissrad said, voice cracking. “I’ll manage.”

He wouldn’t be the first to walk around missing a horn after all.

—

“We’ve lost so many recently.”

As if they weren’t constantly losing people. As if they hadn’t since this bloody war started.

“You are still doing a good job.”

He’d gained a wonderful share of scars here and was slowly losing chunks of himself.

“We appreciate your dedication to the Qun.”

Was this what going mad felt like?

—

Hissrad watched wearily as people darted about, packing and collecting things in a perfected systematic matter.

“I heard they lost a third of the front troops,” Vasaad said, doing what he was actually supposed to be doing and rolling up the thin sleeping mattresses.

Hissrad just watched.

“Hey. Come on, we have to move to a better position.”

Aside from reminding him of their current job, it held the underlying message of ‘don’t get caught just staring. You need to move your body and do things.’

As he continued to do nothing, Vasaad caught his hand, pulling him back further in. “Hissrad, please. I know- I know it’s terrible, but we are both still alive.” And then his hands were cupping his face. “And we are going to stay alive, and we are going to stay sane, and someday, we will both get out of here.”

—

If Hissrad listened closely, if he asked the ruins beforehand, sometimes they would warn him now if someone was coming. This greatly decreased the amount of injuries he would get in the following years.

—

Children were the worst.

No, the worst was when a restless child would attack him, and he would have to kill them in order to put them to rest.

No, the worst was that moment when he destroyed a child’s corpse and felt little at all after.

—

“I promise to you I won’t harm anyone,” the corpse said. “She had so many regrets, you see. Before she had realized fully the cursed nature of this place, all she wanted to was to explore this entire island and see it with her own eyes. I have no desire to do anything else.”

“But you have no plans on moving on,” Hissrad said.

She shook her head. Strange she spoke of herself in the third person. “This island will change over and over through the years. I shall take no part in its changes, but I would like to see what happens.”

“War, likely. Endless war.”

“Likely. But not certainly. Perhaps one day, the war on Seheron will end, and all shall be at peace.”

She sounded hopeful then. Not believing, but hopeful. Hissrad had no idea how she managed that, being dead, having starved in a cell. Hissrad couldn’t even manage four fucking years of this place.

And then she was putting a hand on his right shoulder. “Take heart, Isskari. Though the road be long, you might make it yet.”

—

His one purpose he had clung to was making sure the restless either went peacefully or were otherwise forcefully put to rest. That was what he did. That was how he could- everyone died around him, and he was-

When proper qunari died, and some deceitful traitor couldn’t be assed to follow. He couldn’t pinpoint why anymore, but-

And that was the agreement he struck with himself. They either died, or he let them die peacefully since there were always many paths available to him as long as it fulfilled what was needed. This was important, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember _why._

He let her walk.

—

And just like that, he found more and more that didn’t want to move on yet, all with their own excuses. He was betraying something he knew, some fundamental ideal he held, but his mind swam, and he couldn’t find it in himself to refuse most of them.

—

After restless children who burned to death in an orphanage try to attack you and tear off your flesh with their teeth, and you have to defend yourself. After the bloated corpse of a tamassran, belly swollen no longer with child but with maggots, attempts to stab you. After you try to collect the soul off of yet another dead friend, but this one suddenly rises and tries to tear your face off.

When a young man just wants to be left in peace, promising to stay out of the way of the living, but he’s young and his life was taken so quickly, and it just doesn’t seem right not letting this body wander to find some place free from violence.

They almost always seemed to talk in third person, Hissrad idly thought.

“I might know of a way to smuggle you out of Seheron,” he said, and the corpse actually seemed to smile at him.

—

It would always be so vivid in his mind. Things might be lost later, but not this.

The man had to have been at least a century, Hissrad thought. A century, but even if he was dead he was still kicking. This one wanted inside the ruins. He’d seen them all his life and had never dared to go inside, and now that he was dead, well nothing was stopping him. He had agreed to move beyond after he toured this beautiful pyramid, but until then, he was staying firmly in this world, and he was not about to be lectured otherwise by some qunari not even a third of his age.

Hissrad had liked this one.

An arrow got the restless through the head, and he died. Hissrad was immediately on his feet and whipped around to see the attacker.

It was Vasaad, lowering his bow and looking at him with such pity.

“What-”

“How long have you been doing this?” Vasaad asked quietly. He took a single step forward. Hissrad stepped back, and Vasaad looked pained. “How long have you been talking to these- these demons?”

“They’re not demons,” Hissrad said with a frown, glancing back from the corpse to Vasaad. “They’re just stuck. They can’t move on, but if I talk to them-”

Vasaad dropped his bow, and it clattered to the ground. “Hissrad.”

“Don’t- don’t tell anyone. Please. They wouldn’t understand.”

Vasaad laughed brokenly, shaking his head.

“Please.”

“You’re sick,” Vasaad said, and then laughed again, more hysterical this time. “You’re fully sick. Asala-taar.”

He wasn’t sick. Or maybe he was, but not in this way. “I’m helping them. How fewer restless have we had roaming the area? I can talk them into moving on, I _swear.”_

“You- that’s an angle,” Vasaad said to himself. “You’re helping. Them but us, minimize attacks.”

“Vasaad?”

“Other Qunari have done far, far worse. Some talked to trees. And it’s just the dead, right?” he asked, directly that last bit to him.

Hissrad nodded, confused.

“Okay. Okay! Right. Confusion. Mourning, death, ways to cope. That’s fixable.”

“What… do you mean ‘fixable’?”

Vasaad suddenly had a hand on both shoulders. “You can get out! This is it. This is your pass out of here. It’s not- they’d understand. People have done worse things and walked, and it’s projecting only onto corpses. I swear I can make them believe this.”

Hissrad stared at him blankly.

“There’s no shame in this,” Vasaad said, voice catching. “You just caught it before I did. You can get out. At least one of us will survive. I’ll- forget me, okay. After all this, you’ll get a nice soft job somewhere.”

“Reeducators,” Hissrad said, words drifting out his mouth with no real thought of his own.

Vasaad bit his lip. “I know. It will be terrible, but it would be a week, two at best. Two weeks and then everything is over. And say what you will, but they have been known to do a good job with asala-taar. They’ve got specialists just for that at this point.” He then laughed hollowly.

“I can’t. No Vasaad, please don’t look at me like that. _”_

Because they’d find out. Hissrad could lie and lie and lie to himself all he wanted until he believed it, until he could skirt through the Ben-Hassrath, but under the hands of a reeducator, they would find out.

“You need to. You’re sick.” And Vasaad looked very, very sad.

“I’ll- what if I stop though?” Hissrad pleaded. It was the only thing keeping him going, but- “what if I swear to you I won’t talk to any of them ever again?”

“Please just come,” Vasaad said. “When I’m asking.”

“…you’ll turn me in anyway?”

“You’ve been talking to demons,” Vasaad said tiredly. “They’re not corpses. They’re demons pretending to be otherwise.”

“No.”

“You know, sometimes I think I named you too well?” he said, back on that verge of hysterical.

“They can’t be demons,” Hissrad said. Because saarebas talked to demons, and he wasn’t saarebas.

Granted when demons were possessing something, anyone could hear or talk to demons then. That was the danger of them of course, but he wasn’t saarebas.

“Please come,” Vasaad asked. “Just. Please.”

He would turn him in regardless.

He would be found out regardless.

Other horn sawed off, lips sewn shut, chained and shackled and with a mask fitted around its head. Or it might get the full treatment due to having talked with demons, tongue cut out and eyes removed.

“For you,” Hissrad said.

Vasaad grinned weakly before kissing him, hands moving to cup his face. Hissrad stepped closer, deepening it, and ignored the tears on his cheeks.

They embraced for a while, holding each other, before Vasaad took one of Hissrad’s hand in his.

And he turned his back.

Hissrad made sure it was at the proper angle to make it as quick and painless as possible, and he held Vasaad as he died.

—

They looked for him, of course, mostly among the Tal-Vashoth and those the vints had caught. They didn’t look long because people died and disappeared all the time. Even if they did find the body, it would be a skeleton, carefully and delicately stripped and broken down so it would not rise later.

It was still sad, and people knew that Hissrad and Vasaad had been close. That must have been why Hissrad stopped talking to people other than when necessary. That’s how it happened, sometimes. Just after the right person lost, and someone stops trying to bond with anyone else at all.

But as long as they are mostly functional and don’t talk to demons, they are continued to be sent out on jobs, and Hissrad did them.

Some new viddathari was being trained, one with a loud enough voice and explosive enough temper that Hissrad actually noticed him. Not fully payed attention, but Hissrad noticed him and idly wondered how long it would take for him to die, and when he did, if he would rise or not.

—

Hissrad barely paid attention when they told him he was going to be there for another two years. Of course he was. He never suspected otherwise.

—

“Do you mind staying with me until I can see the moon?” she asked. He didn’t know how she could see, reduced to mostly a skeleton at this point. He’d found her underneath rubble of all things.

So many of the ones trapped in ruins either wanted release or just one chance at seeing something in the outside world.

It was sad really.

“Of course. If that’s what helps.”

—

The dead piled up, and he talked the dead on, and he couldn’t remember why Vasaad had reacted in horror seeing him talk to them.

He remembered Vasaad’s death throes well enough to ignore Gatt when the fiery elf tried to bond with him.

—

Maybe this was his punishment. Maybe this was what he got for trying to deceive the Qun. Maybe this is what he got for deceiving himself. Was that not the root of suffering? If it hadn’t been for his lies, Vasaad would be alive.

Maybe he was nothing but a corruption upon the land and everyone around him.

Maybe he deserved to report himself in, deserved to take whatever the Qun inflicted upon him.

—

Sometimes he idly thought that immolation was the normal way, wasn’t it? If a saarebas was separated from its arvaarad, it was supposed to immolate itself.

Hissrad knew where the gaatlok was, and he knew where the confiscated fire runes were.

Gaatlok would be quick, instantaneous, with no one able to stop him, but it would be a waste of resources undeserved. The runes would also work, but it would take longer with the chance of someone finding out and trying to stop him.

He stood there for a while in the hall, blankly, people passing by, until someone eventually took him by the arm and led him to the sleeping quarters.

—

“Not even this gets you sent home?” Gatt asked, poking at Hissrad’s chest.

He was unlikely referring to the burn scars.

“I’m functional.”

Gatt snorted. “If you say so.”

—

Gatt stuck around for some reason. Maybe it was because Hissrad would sit through all of Gatt’s rants and furious tantrums which Gatt decided made them friends.

Hissrad still knew where the actual gaatlok was and where the stored fire runes were, but he resumed wandering outside for the dead to find him. And they would come, and he would aid them, and he would leave and sleep and work and repeat.

—

It was on his eighth year. Eight long years in Seheron, and this would be how he died.

Poison had thinned their numbers recently. Tal-Vashoth. Then Tevinter had unleashed a swarm of abominations at them. Apparently some magister had been keeping them in a cellar or something to use as raw shock troops.

To be fair, they were effective raw shock troops.

Here and now however, he was lying in a pool of his own blood in a hallway of an old temple overgrown with foliage. He didn’t know to where the hall led. He would rather have liked to know. He didn’t think whatever magister had blown up the doorway really cared about historical integrity. They were just interested in their magic.

He probably could drag his body away if he tried hard enough, but Hissrad was just so tired. He wanted to be done already.

As his vision blurred and his body cooled, someone stepped towards him. At first some part of him sobbed, because how silly of him to think a magister would just leave someone lying there instead of doing any number of things. But as it grew closer, even if everything around grew dim, the shape became a recognizable form, something very dead. With his fading eyesight, they almost looked like they were softly glowing.

They knelt in front of him and gently placed a hand on his head. “Take heart, Isskari. Though the road be long, you might make it yet.”

It was the oddest sensation. No despair had been lifted nor apathy taken from him, but rather it was like some chain had fallen from inside his mind.

But it wasn’t until they were blasted away from his body with a scream for him to realize they—she—had been in the act of physically healing him.

“Blighted undead,” came a voice from the temple. The magister, maybe?

He found himself on his feet, bracing against a wall and clutching at his side, but standing. Everything felt odd. Surreal. Everything jolted too far to the right instead of too far to the left.

Lightning hit him in the chest, and he staggered backwards. That probably should have killed him, he idly thought, even with the healing he received.

He looked up to see a some sneering person in a robe. That wasn’t the magister, probably some apprentice, but the magister wasn’t far behind and already moving towards him. Were they worried? That was a strange notion, now wasn’t it?

He suddenly became aware of a few things. One, he absolutely could not die here, not now. Two, he currently had the element of surprise which would quickly evaporate any second now.

Three, the lightning hadn’t dissipated yet and was instead crackling around him, whipping into a frenzy.

While he had spent the last twenty-two years not doing magic, it was already all around him, now wasn’t it?

He released his hold, and inner floodgates didn’t so much as open as explode outward, and the storm engulfed the world around him.

—

He walked over the charred corpses one-by-one feeling very light for some reason. Somehow he knew it would diminish but not fade completely. It was a gift from her. Hissera. That had been her name. A brief flood of healing for body and mind.

Likely he would have problems later, but not right now.

He canvassed the area, checking for survivors or witnesses. There… were none. No one had noticed his light show, not at least up close. If they noticed the lightning, they would probably assume one of these charred bodies had attacked one of those others with magic, and things had gone wrong. He had simply escaped earlier. It was a believable story, and considering the number of magical mishaps, no one would question his story too deeply.

After eight years of loyalty and dedicated service, no one would even doubt anything at all.

He stood there for a moment, half-swaying, staring into the forest, as rain started to hiss downwards. He gave a single glance back towards the smear of blood, to the place where she had knelt in front of him. And then he departed.

—

The gift did fade over time, but as he had just somehow known, it did not diminish completely, and the weight of all of dead began to heavily press down upon him once more.

It hurt, but it was not the strange, placid kind from before that had smothered him into senselessness.

He hurt. And he was alive, and he must struggle to remain so.

He did not know what Hissera had been, but somehow he knew she wasn’t a typical restless. And she had- transferred something, her wish to see Seheron at peace to him staying alive. Not just breathing and moving, but fully alive.

Had the dead been more cognizant than he?

The bas around him certainly seemed so, flitting about chaotically. He knew what currency was, the concept, how it worked, but he was still rather unfamiliar with it himself. Especially how to get more of it other than doing jobs, but then, no Southerner was interested in hiring a Tal-Vashoth for anything other than mercenary work.

—

Some months later, when being anything but hungry was some hazy concept and yet he still found that he regretted nothing, he was lurking in a tavern. Taverns had food after all, and he found if he was quick about it, he could quietly make off with enough to keep him going longer.

His plans were disrupted when he overheard a cry of pain in a backroom that the owner was fervently ignoring. As it turned out, there were several people in the process of beginning to torture another.

“Are you okay?” the other person asked later as they hid in someone’s barn. Them! Them asking him, the person who had not been getting flailed. He wasn’t sure what gender they were because after several years in Seheron he still had no idea how bas gender worked.

“Well you certainly aren’t,” he said, gesturing to the fact that the person was currently shaking and bloody.

For some reason, the person hugged themself self-consciously, hiding their breasts.

“A minor hit,” he said, changing the subject since he somehow overstepped his bounds. “I’ve had worse.”

They looked him over and laughed weakly. “Is that just your unlucky shoulder then?”

“You have no idea.”

They shivered, and he desperately wished for some bandages. And then because this wasn’t his first few months on Seheron, he whispered for them to stay put.

He snuck out quietly but successfully since you didn’t last a year in Seheron without learning how to not be seen when need be. He evaluated the buildings by how well-off the person seemed to be and then picked his target. Hopefully the family wasn’t short on linens. Or some metal pots.

He washed off their wounds while waiting for the water to boil, strips of cloth ready to transform into makeshift bandages. The person kept glancing at his scars and his horn before chewing at their lip nervously.

“Deserter?” he asked kindly.

“Yeah. You too I’m guessing? Tal-Vashoth?” they asked hopefully.

He nodded, and the person relaxed. “So you aren’t…”

“Judging? Oh no. That would be hypocritical, wouldn’t it?”

—

The man’s name was Cremisius as it turned out, and he had run from the army because they didn’t see him as a man, and that wasn’t done in Tevinter. Seemed rather silly to him which Cremisius agreed. The men in the tavern had wanted to make an example of him, and Cremisius apologized again for him getting injured on Cremisius’ behalf.

Upon being asked, he answered truthfully enough that he deserted because unlike Cremisius, he had been sick in his post to the point where if he stayed any longer, he was just going to blow himself up to get out.

He had decided against that and ran instead.

“Kinda opposite sides then,” Cremisius joked. “That’s shit they kept you there that long though. I don’t blame you for running.” He smiled, which had to hurt his face considering his wounds. “That’d be hypocritical of me.”

They bandaged each other, an intimacy he hadn’t felt in so long. He regretted nothing, but being alone was a terrible sensation. He belonged to nothing, was part of nothing, some self-severed piece tossed by the sea.

Eventually, Cremisius poked his good shoulder. “Okay you know my name now, but you didn’t tell me yours.”

“Qunari don’t have names,” he said. “Only jobs. Occasionally nicknames.”

“So what was yours?”

He shook his head. “I’m no longer Qunari. It doesn’t seem right to call myself by something I’m no longer.”

“Then… what have you been going by?”

He toyed with an unused bandage. “I haven’t. People have simply called me ‘Tal-Vashoth’ which honestly works better than ‘ox-man’. The former works well enough I suppose.”

“Okay no,” Cremisius said. “That’s fucked up. I’m not just calling you ‘Tal-Vashoth’.”

He shrugged half-heartedly. “If you don’t want to, I suppose I can’t stop you. I don’t have a role any longer though.”

“But you aren’t Qunari anymore,” Cremisius said. “What about a name? You could choose a name.”

“Yes, because I have a wide repertoire of bas names.” Well, he did know some. There were many bas in Seheron, and they all had names. It simply wasn’t something he had thought about for himself.

“What about ‘Appius’?”

He frowned. “That’s a Tevinter name.”

“Those are the only ones I know!”

He stuck out his tongue.

“‘Bion’? ’Cerastes’?”

“No.”

“‘Dorian’. How about ‘Felix’?”

“Are you just going through the alphabet?”

“I’ll loop back around later. Alright, what about-”

He held up a hand, and Cremisius looked chagrined. “Sorry. I’ll stop.”

“Dorian,” he repeated, rolling the name on his tongue. “Dorian.”

Cremisius brightened. “Do you like that one?”

“It sounds nice on the tongue, doesn’t it?” He paused. “Do you suppose having a Tevinter name would piss off other vints? As well as Qunari of course.”

“Probably,” Cremisius said sheepishly.

He smiled, showing teeth. “Perfect.”

—

‘Dorian’ ended up traveling with Cremisius. Neither of them had any place to go, and that night had been a bonding experience. Occasionally someone would offer Cremisius a job, sometimes as a guard, once as a seamster, but when they refused Dorian, Cremisius always turned them down.

“I can manage,” Dorian said. He didn’t say ‘please don’t leave me’ as that was pathetic, desperate as he was for companionship and the sensation of actually being the part of a something.

Fortune hit when after a freak attack from bandits on a settlement. They had risen to aid the villagers as had a wandering band of seeming thugs.

“You fight well,” the leader said as she looked over their rather sorry state. “We’re the Red Blades, and we could use some extra swords.”

There was a prevalent stereotype that all Tal-Vashoth had been in the antaam and were excellent fighters. While untrue, you didn’t survive eight years on Seheron without learning how to defend yourself, and you certainly didn’t survive attempting to pacify the restless without being able to kill those that were less than friendly.

The two them talked it over. Dorian hadn’t wanted to fight for a living, and Cremisius was uncertain on how he felt being nothing more than a hired sword, but in the end hunger won.

Sassing your superiors or questioning their orders was forbidden in the Qun, and thus in typical Tal-Vashoth madness, Dorian found himself doing so. Their leader was nice enough and took it in good stride as long as he kept most of it to merely ‘sass’, not in front of potential employers, and never in battle.

Unfortunately, she died a year later as mercenary work didn’t lend to the longest lifespans. The man who had been named successor was neither as tolerant nor as skilled as her, especially in comparison to Cremisius’ growing tactical brilliance. Cremisius and Dorian ending up leaving with two others, a medic and a surly elf who never talked to anyone, instead prone to stabbing furniture.

Dorian rather liked her.

“I suppose we could be a very small strike team?” Cremisius offered around a shared fire. “Maybe find a few others. It’ll be hard to build up a reputation, but it’s manageable.”

Cremisius had taken to mercenary life beautifully.

“We find dead,” the elf said, startling everyone and causing Cremisius to accidentally fling a spoon. “Send in Dorian. Problem solved, looks nice on resume.” She grinned nastily.

“Are you unnaturally skilled at killing undead or something?” Marcus asked Dorian.

Cremisius just patted his shoulder. “You’ll see soon enough.”

—

The dead were quite reasonable. Honestly. And they usually followed a pattern.

Ones caged or trapped just wanted to walk around the surface for a while.

Those murdered or slaughtered wanted either retribution or for there to at least be an inquiry into their murder.

Those who died of hunger would agree to move on if they had a feast first.

This apparently blew people’s minds, and not just that Dorian could talk them into passing. He began to develop a reputation as some kind of strange dead-whisperer amongst their motley crew. He tried to show the others how easy it was, but the dead seemed skittish around them for some reason.

“They seem to like you,” ‘Dalish’ said in her lilting accent. “Maybe you’ve developed your own reputation, just among them.”

“That seems silly,” Dorian said. “How would they be able to tell others if they’ve moved on?”

—

Surly elf had decided to call herself ‘Skinner’ as it fitted her. In solidarity, Marcus started going by ‘Stitches’, and it just started to be a thing among all the new hires. Skinner also felt that ‘Cremisius’ was too long to say and only called him ‘Krem’.

That too was adopted by everyone.

While the new recruits adopted their own nicknames, Dorian kept to his.

“It’s the first non-Qunari name I’ve had, and I’m rather fond of it,” he said, and Krem blushed for some reason. “Besides, we have a ‘Krem’, so I wouldn’t be a complete outlier.”

—

The Flashfire Company began to get a solid reputation of doing a job well, enough they could take only respectable contracts and live decently enough.

(Rejected names had been 'The Expatriates', ‘Krem's Vagabonds’, ‘Krem’s Vagrants’, ‘The Hire-Us-Please Company’, and ‘A Disordered Horde of Troglodytes’.)

Dorian always got twitchy when new members found out his secret, even if it wasn’t much as a secret anymore. They simply viewed his insistence of talking to the dead first as a weird quirk, no different than Dalish’s ‘archery’ or how Rocky kept blowing things up or how Grim had yet to utter a single word.

He began to honestly feel not just safe but accepted in a way he never had under the Qun. Occasionally someone would leave or join (or die), but the unit was a whole, and he continued to be more than himself which breathed right in his veins to the point where he would actually mention things. That he spent eight years on Seheron gathering magical items. That his secret of talking to the dead was found out one day by someone, and that he had to kill them (but not who it was). That he didn’t leave because of that even, just that he suddenly realized the option of leaving was a possibility open to him. Which took eight fucking years to realize.

In hindsight, Dorian could have avoided so much if he had just ran from the start. No one said this though. They all seemed sympathetic instead.

Magic though. That he never mentioned, nor what being an ‘artifact retrieval and magical ruin specialist’ really meant. He knew it was illogical. Dalish’s ‘archery’ was a joke. While it wasn’t quite the same in Tevinter or Rivain, magic was more wildly accepted among mercenary bands where it was simply useful to have.

But the habit was too deeply ingrained. He honestly tried sometimes, but whatever strange block he had developed over the years was too strong to break past.

This was dangerous, because ever since Hissera, the magic had started to slip out. That lightning would build under his skin into this impossible pressure, until he would be forced to sneak off at night and simply discharge. But bit by bit, that charge would build up faster, and he had no idea what to do. Not at first.

Magesbane made him sick, but he had money with which to buy it. He could buy all sorts of unneeded things and would do so, laughing at the novelty.

In the right doses, it was manageable and dampened his charge enough to perhaps once every few months. At first.

And then one day, the sky fucking split open into _green,_ and demons rained down from the heavens, and rifts tore through the land, and magic permeated everything it touched. There was a Qunari saying: “As does a drowning man know the sea, so does a mage know magic.” Dorian had dismissed it before, but he was becoming intimately familiar with how true it could really be.

And he had no idea what to do.

—

“So we’ve got ourselves a new contract,” Krem said to the gathered group. “All the kinks have been worked out and details hashed over. Pay’s great, even if the accommodations are still a work in progress. But that just seems how they currently are, still scrambling to get themselves organized and equipped.”

Dalish raised her hand.

“Don’t worry. I always check things out, and they will be okay with your ‘archery’.”

Dalish lowered her hand and then looked over at Dorian.

“And his special talents. That’s actually a draw apparently since they are having a lot of undead problems.” Krem grinned. “We’ve been hired by the Inquisition.”

…the ‘Inquisition’. The Chantry-based organization run by _both_ hands of the Divine. Oh this was going to be _fantastic._


End file.
